Mohamed Salah has been hugely impressive for Liverpool this season - but what have his goals meant in the Premier League title race?
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Mohamed Salah of Liverpool
Mohamed Salah of Liverpool(Image: James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images)
There's a reason why the Ballon d'Or is fast becoming the Ballon Bore. The tedious speculation over an individual award in a team sport took another turn in the last week when the collective failure of Liverpool to progress in the Champions League appeared to signal the death knell of Mohamed Salah's hopes of winning the award.
In truth, what used to be a prestigious honour based on a variety of factors has long become either a popularity contest or a decision to give the gong to someone who plays for the team that happened to win the biggest honours that particular season.
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Certainly, there's no chance Salah would happily swap the chance of winning a second Premier League title for such arbitrary recognition. Awards of this nature in any industry must be taken with a sizeable pinch of salt.
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No doubt, though, that Salah has been a driving force behind Liverpool being 12 points clear at the top of table with just nine games remaining. Five home wins - given one of those matches is against nearest challengers Arsenal - would be sufficient to claim a record-equalling 20th title.
In the Premier League alone, Salah has 27 goals and 17 assists in 29 appearances, contributing in some way to 64% of the Reds' tally of 69 strikes.
But how much have the Egyptian's goals contributed directly to Liverpool's points tally of 70 from 29 games? A drill into the figures makes for intriguing reading.
Thirteen of Liverpool's 21 wins in the top flight have come by a margin of more than one goal in which they remained ahead after scoring the first goal. An example of that was the 6-3 win at Tottenham Hotspur before Christmas, in which Luis Diaz broke the deadlock.
And in total the Colombian has set the Reds on their way to such victories on six different occasions. For Salah, the total is two, along with Darwin Nunez and Dominik Szoboszlai, while Diogo Jota and Cody Gakpo have one each.
Where Salah comes into his own, though, is when games are tight. In the six games Premier League games this season where Liverpool have won by one goal, the Egyptian has scored the winner on four occasions, with Jota and Curtis Jones contributing one each.
Salah and Jones have also scored the goal to put Liverpool ahead when the Reds have come from behind to win by more than one goal, against Southampton and Leicester City at home respectively.
The forward also scored the equaliser in the win at Southampton, while Nunez did likewise at home against the Saints and Gakpo did so against both Brighton and Leicester at Anfield.
And when Liverpool have had to fight back to score the last goal in a draw, Salah has done so once at Arsenal. Trent Alexander-Arnold managed the feat at Aston Villa, while Jota secured a point at home to Fulham and away at Nottingham Forest.
All goals matter in transforming the pattern of the game. But Salah's strikes have ultimately changed a match in a positive manner on nine occasions to swing 16 points in favour of Liverpool. And when the margins have been tight, that's when the Egyptian King has delivered most. Ballon what?